Alcoa will move to Class 4A in 2025

On By Littum

Alcoa’s dominance in the Class 3A TSSAA football state championships will come to an end. The TSSAA accepted the school’s proposal to move up to Class 4A for the next classification cycle (2025-2029).

Alcoa has won a state-record nine consecutive 3A state championships and 22 overall. It has won the past five state title games by a combined score of 194-60.

Alcoa’s entry of 677 correctly places it in Class 3A, but the question of whether the Tornadoes have outgrown their competition comes up almost annually. Alcoa (5-1) travels to face rival Maryville at 7:00 pm on Friday.

Alcoa athletic director Josh Stephens said the move has less to do with that success and more to do with finding a bigger region that makes it easy to play 10 regular-season games without struggling to find out-of-region opponents.

Alcoa has played a 10-game area schedule in all but two seasons since 2012, but will play nine games this season.

“I think there will be a lot of people in the public who really don’t understand the ins and outs who will be excited because they feel like it’s going to be a whole different set of challenges,” Stephens said. “But personally, I’m not sure there’s a big gap in talent between 3A, 4A and 5A. I could be wrong, but I think our chances are about the same in any of those classifications as far as success regardless. Perception may be different, but perception is perception.”

Alcoa’s current region, Region 2-3A, has only five teams, and the game against Scott requires a trip of nearly 1.5 hours. Stephens believes a Class 4A regional could include seven or eight teams and would help avoid a situation like last year, when Alcoa played 10 games but had to host Tottenville (N.Y.), which didn’t attract much interest from fans.

“Obviously, it’s a different landscape (in 4A), a different set of teams, some new rivalries that will most likely be created. There’s some excitement about some changes there,” Stephens said.

The Tornadoes will be in the same classification as Pearl-Cohn and Upperman high schools. Pearl-Cohn captured the 4A state championship last year, beating Upperman 36-27. Both are among the favorites to return in December. Upperman enters Week 10 with an 8-0 record. Pearl-Cohn is 6-2.

The Firebirds’ enrollment numbers (524) list the school in 2A, according to the TSSAA’s initial classification list released October 8. But the school decided it will continue to play in 4A.

The last competitive Class 3A final was Alcoa’s 21-14 win over Covington in 2018. The Tornadoes’ last loss to a Class 3A opponent was CPA in the 2014 state championship game. CPA moved to Division II in 2014 and has become a DII-AA power. CPA will move to DII-AAA next year.